At 18:44 24-07-02 -0400, you wrote:>I just picked up Heat Wave by Timothy Harris. It was
recently mentioned>that it was the novelization of a script Harris
himself wrote, but could>not sell. However, the cover says it was based on a
screenplay by>Herschel Weingrod, who was Harris's co-scripter on 8
movies (and the>copyright is Weingrod's). The cover also says Harris
is the author of>American Gigolo, which I'm guessing must be the
novelization, since the>movie was written (and directed) by Paul
Schrader.>Mark>

Yes, AMERICAN GIGOLO (1979) was a novelization. There was
another one: STEELYARD BLUES (1972) from Alan Meyerson's
film.

I still could not find HEAT WAVE, the novel among my books.
But I found back an interview Timothy Harris gave in France
in 1983 and reported (in French) by Fran篩s Guerif in Polar No
26 at the time. Harris explained the following:

"Interview (translated)
(After a discussion about how he came to write his first
novel'Kronsky/Mc Smash' -1969- a book which he didn't really
believe it could be published, as he himself saw it as a
parody and a satire)

"Q/ You decided to be a writer... TA/ Not really so. I was
asked to write novelizations, like for STEELYARD BLUES, a
film with Jane Fonda, and for HEAT WAVE which was an original
scenario I tried to sell for a friend
" So the confusion was in another other article I found
wherein implicitly I understood the scenario for Heat Wave
was by Harris.

Some abstracts of interest of the same interview:

"Q/ What about American Gigolo? TA/ I was broken and I wanted
to go to London, so I needed the money. I really dislike this
book! In fact, I really didn't like the script in the first
place.

"Q/ Which of your PIs do you like more? Thomas Kyd or
Paradise? TA/Paradise is the most realist.

"Q/ There are some authors you prefer? TA/ None amongst the
crime/mystery authors. What I like in Chandler's work it's
his style, his English culture serving the form of his
writing. I'm more attracted by satirists like Evelyn Waugh or
Joseph Kennedy O'Toole.

"Q/ During the last few years you didn't publish anything TA/
That's because I write scripts. To write books takes too much
of my time, with an unsatisfactory result.

--
# To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
# majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .